


Poetry As An Outlet For The Useless Lesbian

by stormbourne



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Meteorstuck, Pre-hookup Rosemary, Rose has it bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-31 11:08:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10898100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormbourne/pseuds/stormbourne
Summary: Rose Lalonde has a crush on an insectoid vampire alien from another universe, and has no idea how to deal with it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a group fic exchange way back when for Valentine's Day. For [ectogeo!](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ectogeo)

"You know," Dave said. It was the loudest he ever got over his gravelly mumble. Not even good gravel, Rose mused, flipping a page in her book as she cast her eyes up at him. It had been the sort of "you know" which she had long since learned that Dave was looking for attention or, at the very least, some kind of response. 

"You know," he repeated. His hands were shoved into his pockets -- on some level she was surprised to learn his godtier pajamas had pockets, and on another, it seemed entirely obvious. Of course they had pockets. Why wouldn't they? But alas, he wanted even more indication than she'd already given him that she was paying attention, so she lifted her eyebrows obligingly. That, however, still didn't seem to be enough for him. He did pinch his mouth a bit to one side, like he had something foul on his tongue but didn't want to ruin his facade by spitting it onto the floor. 

"Yes, Dave?" she offered at last. "What is it, exactly, that I know?"

He let out a sigh. That sort of sigh indicated that he had expected her to read his mind, no matter how many times she had told him that was not, in fact, how Seer powers worked at all. Or, at least, for her. Whether they worked that way for Terezi or not was not something Rose very deeply did not want to consider. 

"What I'm saying is, Rose," he said. This time it was back to his low mumble, trying to mask the Texan accent by slurring his words together. She sighed and made a show of returning to her book. "Hey. No. Hey, I'm saying something here." 

"You're actually dancing around saying something here, as far as I've observed," she countered. The book was somewhat dreadful, but it was the exact sort of dreadful she enjoyed most. One of Karkat's personal collection, covertly exchanged after asking him if he had something even trashier than the vacillation drama he'd tried to explain to Dave. That had been just before the two of them had broken down into dick-drawing giggles in the middle of her book. She had nearly ripped the page out, but instead decided she would frame it, later. Perhaps with a note attached which said "I told you so," for their first anniversary. She hadn't decided yet if that was cutting enough. 

"You know exactly what I'm saying, Rose," he insisted. She glanced back up at him, doing her very best to look apathetic. She hadn't the slightest idea what he was saying here. Dave had a tendency to meander at the best of times, and mumble to himself at the others. Perhaps he'd been mumbling, and she'd tuned him out? But no, she was all but certain he hadn't been in the room a moment ago. It had been only her and Kanaya. 

"See," he said. "You _do_ know." 

She'd glanced over at the troll for an instant, where she sat in the corner working on tailoring a new skirt. Unfortunately, that must have given her away to Dave. She closed her book, heaved an especially exaggerated sigh, and gave him a look that she hoped indicated exasperation even as it also indicated that she was paying attention. 

"Well?" she said, when he didn't continue. "Go on, then. Make whatever point you're getting at, Dave, some of us don't have all day." 

"Yeah, you're really filling up the time there, reading some of Karkat's trashy fucking novels," Dave mumbled. He shoved his hands even deeper into his pockets. It gave him the appearance of a slightly smashed beanpole, with his head dropped between his shoulders like a turtle. "What I'm saying," he managed, finally, "is that you've got it bad." 

She most certainly did not have it bad -- whatever "it" even was. Was this really something to do with Kanaya? She glanced over at the other girl, who was examining a piece of dark violet cloth like it held all the secrets of the uncaring predestined universe somewhere within it. A pair of pins stuck out from between her lips, her long eyelashes lowered over grey eyes that were, ever so slightly, starting to turn the same color of green that Kanaya herself did when she blushed. There was a little furrow between her brows. Her hair was just barely mussed -- perhaps she hadn't looked to it yet today, or perhaps she'd been up for a long while. Rose was never sure what hours counted for day or night anymore. The glow of her skin was almost gentle at the moment, white light reflecting off the wall behind her.

As if detecting Rose's eyes on her, she looked up. At once, Rose felt her cheeks color and diverted her eyes to the wall before looking away completely.

"Like I said," Dave said. She could see the way he turned his thumbs outward from within his pockets, an incredibly infuriating told-you-so gesture. Rose made a mental note to amend whatever card would be attached to the page full of penis scrawlings. It had to be incredibly, sickeningly sentimental. "You've got it bad."

She might have eviscerated him, if not for the way that his awkward, barely-there smile suggested that he had it a bit bad, himself. For someone else, of course, but the fact remained that Dave had always been a bit of a case study in "it takes one to know one." 

"I haven't any idea what you're talking about," she said. "Don't you have something to do with Karkat?"

-

_green as the sun amidst the black_  
_bright as day amidst the night_  
_lips like a pair of_  
_no._  
_No._  
_This is awful._

-

Kanaya was not the first time that Rose had considered dalliances with an alien. If she had told her nine-year-old self that she would, in four years, be head over heels for a vampiric insect woman from another universe, it wouldn't have come as a surprise at all. Though a woman quite as humanoid as Kanaya Maryam was not what she would have imagined, given that description. 

And perhaps she might have anticipated more tentacles. 

Regardless, though, here she stood. Her reflection stared back at her. She was slightly flushed. Her hair was mussed and unkempt, though that didn't matter much. She would comb it before she went to talk to Kanaya herself. 

"Kanaya," she said to her reflection. "I was wondering if -- "

No. Too stiff. She needed to relax her shoulders. Look more loose, more laid back. Maybe even a bit devil-may-care. She tried to think of how Vriska might approach the entire endeavor, but the idea of simply marching up to Kanaya and informing her that Rose had decided they were dating now was … unpalatable. Not to mention, she'd seen some of the looks Kanaya occasionally gave Vriska. They weren't the sort of looks that Rose wanted directed at her. 

She breathed out and examined herself in the mirror. There were dark rings under her eyes, though she couldn't fathom why. If anything, this was the most sleep she'd ever gotten. No strange haunting dreams of violet towers filled with the sounds of cats meowing, or waking up to find new and odd calluses covering her hands. She had a makeshift bed made with Kanaya's help, makeshift blankets that Kanaya had helped her hem, and even makeshift pillows that Kanaya had helped her stuff with appropriated scalemate filling. 

Nearly everything she'd done since she'd arrived had been with Kanaya, about Kanaya, or both. It was beginning to get ridiculous. 

"At least," she told her reflection, trying not to notice the zit forming next to one nostril (Kanaya, however, would almost certainly notice it), "I'm not Dave." That wasn't much comfort. Dave's complete inability to leave Karkat Vantas alone for two seconds might have been worse than her own dithering, but that didn't mean she wasn't a complete disaster.

She'd had a speech, of sorts, planned. Now the entire thing seemed silly. Shallow and base. Kanaya deserved better than some carefully-calculated paragraph about why Rose had decided to ask her on a date.

Really, what sort of date could the two of them go on, anyway? There was nowhere to go. Just the hallways sprawling into the guts of the meteor, deep into the genetics laboratories. Very romantic.

She picked up her hairbrush.

-

_love is a thornéd flower_  
_yet ever I find myself eager_  
_to prick my finger and draw forth blood;_  
_what sensation would find me there_  
_wrapped in your arms_  
_testing my skin against that sharp point_  
_and still_

_Ugh! I'm garbage. This is all garbage._

-

"Well?" 

Karkat had a way of never managing to do anything quietly. The boy couldn't even walk down a hallway without stomping, rustling, mumbling under his breath, quietly growling, cursing as he stubbed his toe, and more. One day, Rose had resolved quite some time ago, she was going to make a list of all the way Karkat gave himself away when a subtle entrance was clearly what he was hoping for.

"Good afternoon, Karkat," she said, and scrawled another line of text. 

"Don't you 'good afternoon' me, Lalonde," he said, and took a deep breath to doubtless get started on a tirade which wasn't likely to end for some time. 

"My mistake, then," she cut him off. "Good morning. You'll have to forgive me. It's incredibly difficult to keep track of time, when you're traveling through a timeless and lightless void." As if to emphasize this, she reached over to adjust the light of the lamp on the sidetable.

Karkat looked positively fit to explode. He took a loud, noisy breath through his nose, and she watched him mentally count to ten before letting it out, equally noisy, through his teeth. 

"I came in here with a question, you posturing know-it-all," he began, "and even though I know you'd rather feed me a whole cart's worth of hoofbeast shit than give me a straight answer, said straight answer is all I'm going to accept from you!" To his credit, that time he had at least started off quiet. But, unsurprisingly, his volume had increased tenfold within just that sentence alone. 

Rose made a show of closing her notebook and looking up at him. Like with Dave, that gesture of undivided attention seemed to fluster him, and he had to take a moment to regain his composure.

"Go on," she said, when he didn't immediately pick up where he'd left off. 

"Right," he said. He took another deep breath. She could see his chest swelling with the insults he was about to spew.

"Did Dave send you to talk to me about Kanaya?" 

He sputtered, which served to half-deflate him. "What?" he demanded, and then, "No! I haven't even seen Dave today! Why would _Dave_ have sent me? What does he have to do with any of this?" That burst of defensiveness finished, he continued, almost without stopping for another breath, "And anyway, Dave didn't need to send me! You're clearly thinkpan over walkstubs for her and she's clearly thinkpan over walkstubs for _you_ and at this stage it's reaching new and embarrassing levels of pathetic that neither of you have done anything about it!" 

His shoulders heaved as he finished. His bushy eyebrows were furrowed, his eyes filled with just as much bright blood red as Kanaya's were with vibrant jade green, and he was glaring at Rose like she'd personally kicked his puppy. If trolls even had puppies. "Immature barkbeast" might be the term, she supposed.

"Why are you asking me about this?" she asked, instead of following her instincts to mock and defuse. It was a bit harder when the subject at hand was the girl she had a crush on, and, for that matter, the girl she'd been writing poetry about twenty seconds earlier. Not to mention Karkat’s indication that Kanaya might feel the same.

"Why shouldn't I?" he snapped. "Are you saying I'm wrong?" 

"I'm asking why you came to me, instead of going to Kanaya." 

At that, all his fiery, angry resolve seemed to dissipate into sullenness. He crossed his arms, crumpling himself up and gnawing on his lip. She barely heard him mumble something under his breath, but didn't bother trying to make it out. 

"I appreciate the advice, Karkat." She opened her notebook again, trying to concentrate on the words. They all seemed shallow and meaningless, now. She found that she had completely forgotten what metaphor she had been driving at. Pearls and opals amidst dark stone -- no. It was gone. "But this is more complicated than you think," she finished, setting down her pen.

"I'm pretty sure it's not," he replied. 

Doubtless he wanted to say more. "Unless you'd like my completely unsolicited and possibly completely unhelpful advice for discussing _your_ feelings with Dave," Rose countered before he could continue, "I'd really suggest you leave it be." 

That, at least seemed to stop him. She feigned interest in resuming her poem, but even so, she didn't need to watch him leave to know that he was going. His too-heavy footfalls scraped and thudded their way out.

-

_envy, the green eyed monster_  
_or is it the monster that I envy?_

_I can't finish this._  
_I can't even start this._

-

"Did you want to talk to me?" 

The way Kanaya stood in the doorway was something Rose imagined would be right at home in a noir film. She was long legs and dark lashes and beautiful slight curves, full lips and pinpricks of jewel-tone green in her cat-yellow eyes. There was beauty in every last inch of her, and for what she knew wouldn't be the last time, Rose hated how awestruck she was at the sight of Kanaya Maryam. 

"Yes," she said. She reached up. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She fought down the flush that attempted to rise up her face with every passing moment. She cleared her throat. She blinked. She smiled. "I did, actually. Her voice attempted to quaver, but she held it tight. This was not the time. 

"Karkat said that you had something you needed." Even the way Kanaya talked, frankly, could have inspired poetry. It was more the pity that Sylvia Plath had never encountered trollkind, quite frankly. Rose would have _loved_ to read the metaphors she might have come up with to describe them. Moreover, then she wouldn't be the one burdened with the responsibility of beating Dave to immortalizing them in text. There were some things ironic rap just wasn’t suited for. Kanaya tilted her head and Rose had to snap out of contemplating the sweep of her hair over her eyes, the curl of her horns. 

She did have it bad. 

"I -- wanted to tell you that I -- " 

Dear god, no. Not like that.

" -- wrote some poetry!"

That was possibly the only thing worse that she could have said. She'd hidden her notebook under her makeshift bed specifically to _avoid_ ever having to discuss it. Immediately, her hands flew to cover her mouth. 

"That -- sounds lovely," Kanaya said, sounding confused. She took so much care to enunciate every word. Rose wanted to melt into the floor. "Did you want me to read it?"

No.

"If you'd like to," Rose said, from behind her hands, because "no" was not an acceptable answer. She had started digging the hole. She had to keep going now. "Or -- or maybe I could read some of it to you?" 

"Oh," Kanaya said. The tips of her ears turned slightly green. "If you would like to, then I would be happy to stay and listen." She settled onto Rose's bed, which was embarrassing enough when Rose had to gesture her aside a moment later so she could dig out the hidden notebook. It was even more embarrassing when she stared, rapt, at Rose as Rose struggled to find something that was even halfway passable to read aloud. 

It was the worst moment of Rose's life. 

When she finished the first poem, Kanaya said she would love to hear another. The second led to a third. Rose only managed to stave off a fourth by pleading that they weren't all finished yet and she had several she was still working on. Of course, those several weren't being worked on at all. They were abandoned. And justifiably so. She'd never read anything so turgid and purple in her entire life. The first thing she was going to do tomorrow was burn the notebook and everything in it. It was kind of Kanaya to humor her, but she'd put up with so much that even she couldn't possibly _truly_ want to hear another word.

"It's very good." 

Rose blinked up at the troll, whose cheeks were that lovely shade of green and who was smiling at her -- and almost looked shy, somehow. Her heart skipped five beats in a row. 

"Really," Kanaya continued when Rose found herself completely unable to work up a protest. "I think -- I think your poetry is quite good, Rose." Her flush deepened a bit and she looked away. "I would -- deeply like to do this again soon, if you don't mind." 

"Of course," Rose said. She wasn't sure she understood how most of the English language worked anymore. "I'd -- I'd love to. Anytime, Kanaya." 

Kanaya's smile grew wider, her fangs pushing into her bottom lip. Did Kanaya ever go anywhere without perfect cosmetics? Rose was beginning to think that Kanaya wasn't even real. "I suppose -- I suppose that's it for now, then?" 

"Yes," Rose said. "I suppose it is. Thank you for coming. I'm glad you liked it." 

Kanaya excused herself. Rose intended to see her to the door, but she'd found that her knees refused to function. She watched as Kanaya glided her way out of the door, glancing back once and flashing Rose that flawless smile, two spots of green against the glowing white of her smooth, flawless cheeks. 

Rose picked her notebook back up, and scrambled for the pen she'd tossed away earlier. 

_My love,_ she scrawled, _is pale as alabaster._


	2. BONUS CONTENT: u r my totnio

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written way back when for a Valentine's Day exchange. Here is a different part of the request that I couldn't make into an entire fic, but wanted to include anyway.

"Do you like it."

It wasn't a question, but Dave did have a certain tone that Rose knew meant he was looking for her approval. He liked to pretend otherwise, but then, he'd always been remarkably transparent where she was concerned.

"It's perfect," Rose replied. "I'm going to have it leather-bound." 

"Don't think there's anybody out there that can do that now," Dave mumbled. A slight flush colored his cheeks regardless.

"Excuse me." Kanaya draped an arm over Rose's shoulder. Dave's face immediately dropped into the closest he got to a terrified grimace, his blush fading. "I would like to see it." 

Rose let her own mouth spread into a smirk, watching as beads of sweat prickled on Dave's forehead. "It would be my pleasure," she said. Kanaya plucked the pages from her hands, and Rose let her smile grow as Dave visibly swallowed.


End file.
